Historically, World Teachers’ Day was established by UNESCO in 1994. In 1996, it commemorated the signing of Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers. The recommendation focused on the rights, responsibilities, training, employment and working conditions of the teachers. Since 1994, this day is observed with each year focusing on a unique theme related to the advancements or the challenges faced by teachers all over the world.
It is with untainted value that we welcome the theme for this year’s World Teachers’ Day – Valuing teacher voices: towards a new social contract for education. They are indeed veritable as builders of society and molders of generations intellectually and even socially.
According to the official website of UNESCO, this year’s World Teacher’s Day focused on “the urgency of calling for and attending to teachers’ voices to address their challenges but, most importantly, to acknowledge and benefit from the expert knowledge and input that they bring to education”.
We acknowledge the enormous pains of teachers across the globe, although the challenges differ not too significantly from one country to the other. In all, there enormous concerns that need to be addressed locally.
Across the world, teachers go through multiple challenges from low wages, to poor working conditions to absence of quality education. The Teacher’s Day focuses on the problems faced by them and raises awareness about the importance of the role that teachers play in our lives. It also serves as a day when students can express their gratitude to the teachers, and how they helped in shaping the lives of the ones they teach.
It indeed gratifying that there is more awareness being raised at very levels to the need to enhance teachers status across board as we emphasized that the ‘goose that lays that golden egg’ deserves adequate protection, recognition and better welfare packages.
However, we are concerned about the negligence to teachers’ working conditions including emoluments and terminal benefits which most times come far between while others die waiting to be paid.
Also, despite regulatory provisions that employers of labour ensure a pension scheme for a workforce of over five personnel, this is often observed in breach than in compliance.
Indeed, several private schools who pay less than complimentary salaries to their teachers take advantage of the general job placement challenges to pay outrageous sums to their employees- many just pittance that can barely sustain the most rudimentary existence. Hence you find such institutions experiencing teachers engaging in various unprofessional conducts to make ends meet.
AljazirahNigeria salutes teachers for being the foundational standard for the whole world and it is not out of place that the UN finds it expedient to make the celebration of a global note.
It is important for the Teachers’ Council of Nigeria, TCN, and various stakeholders to stimulate discourse on how the private and government educational sectors can harmonise, standardize and enhance professionalism in all ramifications such that teachers would not be at the receiving end of these deleterious practices.
